


The art of grief

by sweetlikesugar



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Art School, Alternate Universe - College/University, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Gansey and Ronan are art students, M/M, Not Beta Read, angst without happy ending, past rovinsky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 15:31:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10642773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetlikesugar/pseuds/sweetlikesugar
Summary: Ronan can never escape the black eyed stare of the boy hidden in the shadows.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on a TRC roll so I take advantage of it as much as I can, I'm not even into rovinsky so maybe that's why it's angst lol

Ronan Lynch prided himself in having his front impenetrable.

 

The school he attended with Gansey tried to rip that front apart, to crush his carefully constructed walls to bare the vulnerability they claimed was unavoidable while creating art.

Ronan Lynch was a shell of a man.

He started to crumble at the beginning of their spring semester.

“I want your bare soul on that canvas”, their proffesor announced glaring pointedly at Ronan, “I want to see parts of you you wish to forget, destroy and live behind”.

He tried to ignore the way Gansey stared at him, deep and sincere sadness shining in his eyes. It made Ronan want to scream.

 

Ronan Lynch was a man of carefully constructed contradictions.

 

“I hate it when you're like this”, Gansey murmured, kicking empty bottles around Ronan, watching his friend sit barefoot in front of a canvas. Gansey knew the process of creation Ronan went through everytime. He witnessed countless canvases destroyed, sketchbooks ripped apart and lit on fire. He watched his friend dig deep inside the wound he refused to let heal.

“He said a bare soul on a canvas”, Ronan sneered, his words acidic, “parts of me I wish to leave behind”.

Gansey recognised when he lost before he even started.

 

Ronan Lynch kept destructing and creating himself simultaneously.

 

“Fuck”, Ronan screamed viciously, glaring at the eyes mocking him from the canvas. Eyes that kept following his every move and every thought.

“Fuck you”, he yelled, voice breaking in the middle.

“Why won't you let me live?”, he whispered, as the eyes kept staring.

 

Gansey was a good friend, simply because he didn't know how to stop being one.

He saw the way Ronan kept clinging to that one thing that killed him and kept him alive at the same time. He wondered how long Ronan could keep up with his own head.

 

Joseph Kavinsky was a forest fire.

He was wild and vicious and impossible to tame. That's probably why Ronan couldn't stay away from him. Joseph Kavinsky was urgent kisses pressed in the dark, tasting like smoke and gasoline, he was cold hands pressing under shirts, he was ribcage expanding and contracting with hitching harsh breaths. He was blasphemies whispered in cold air of the night, he was Lord's name taken in vain with wet lips pressed against collarbones, he was the blood rushing in Ronan's veins, he was too much and not enough.

 

Ronan didn't leave his room for three days. He kept looking at the blank canvas that mocked him plain as day. He sat on the windowsill, inhaling smoke and exhaling despair, his brain clinging to the taste of a boy he once knew.

 

Joseph Kavinsky was a wound that never healed.

He was a bleeding reminder of what Ronan once had, of what he could have.

Joseph Kavinsky was a soft whisper when the night grayed with dawn, crooked smiles over coffee mugs, playful shoving and mischieviously quirked eyebrows with eyes shining with fondness.

 

“Ronan open the goddamn door, I haven't seen you in a week and we live together”, Gansey shouted urgently.

“I'm not starving and I'm still alive”, Ronan shouted back.

“That's not the point and you know it”.

Ronan sighed and unlocked the door, lightly pushing it open. In the middle of his room stood giant canvas marked with anger, desperation and hopelsessness.

“That's what you're submitting?”, Gansey said hushed, afraid of breaking the fragility of the moment.

“That's what I'm feeling”, Ronan corrected, equally quiet, “I don't know what I'm submitting”.

Gansey nodded, pressing fingers to the back of Ronan's buzzed head gently. “Get some air”, he advised.

Neither one commented on black eyes mocking from the center of the canvas.

 

“Lynch”, his proffesor stopped him at the end of the lecture.

He stayed behind, shrugging at Gansey's questioning gaze.

“I'm curious about the piece you'll submit”.

“So am I”, Ronan answered and slipped out before his teacher had a chance to ask anything else.

 

The screaming and choking coming from Ronan's bedroom increased in frequency as the project's deadline approached. Everything seemed to be black eyes and harsh lines full of hate and the boy hidden in the shadows.

Gansey could do no more than just simply exist beside Ronan and soothe him with soft words and even softer touches as he kept tiring himself out with his grief.

“How long are you going to keep grieving him, Ronan”, he whispered one day, rocking back and forth with his friend's face tucked in his neck, “you're tearing yourself apart”.

“Maybe that's the point of grief”, Ronan muttered, “maybe that's the point of art”.

 

On the day of the deadline, Ronan was nowhere to be seen. All that was left was a giant canvas, streaked with paint, coal and pain, with two black eyes mocking from the centre.

 


End file.
